


I'd surrender all

by goldfishtobleroneandamitie



Series: sirens will sing (music of the spheres) [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, almost a songfic but not really, almost breakup, record player
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfishtobleroneandamitie/pseuds/goldfishtobleroneandamitie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They realize who they are, and what they can never be, without each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd surrender all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opabine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opabine/gifts).



 

The record flicks on, scratching as the needle skids across the wear of time.

_I wake up to the silence_  
 _In a room where I once heard "Good morning dear"_  
 _I never thought I'd miss the early morning smell_  
 _Of hairspray in the air_

It’s not quite right—she’d never call him ‘dear’, not in a million years. Hell, their relationship is the opposite of normal—he cooks and is more of a neat freak than she by far, and she’s more the type to go out drinking and come home late. She’s even on top in bed more often than not, because getting pinned down sometimes brings back memories that don’t belong anywhere in their bed. It’s happened more than once that he holds her as she comes back down from a panic attack, any more romantic intent for the evening forgotten.

It balances out, though, because she pulls him out of his shell. He’s always been the guide, the staid, solid one in every relationship he’s ever had. The Amis give him enough trouble, he’d always said—he needed some stability in his home life, at least. So he’s dated history majors, law students, debutantes. Women who want to be his partner, walking even with him on the path of life. Éponine’s not like that at all—she’s always in front, dragging him behind, laughing all the way.

And she makes him laugh, too. When he sees her, he gets a swoop in his stomach that he’s never gotten from anyone else—butterflies in his stomach, or like his heart’s trying to cut off his windpipe. When he tries to communicate this to Jehan, the poet simply leans over, pats his hand, and tells him that he understands poetry now.

Éponine makes him feel like he can do anything, be anything. Jump off a building, and she’d be there on the ground, catching him if she feels like it or laughing if she misses. Loving her is a bruising, burning love—not something to be cuddled and kept safe, but something that moves through him, that keeps a constant itch in his mind when she isn’t there, that makes him want to constantly be touching her when she is. Not sexually, even; he just loves running his hands through her hair, down her arms, having her in his lap while Enjolras pontificates. When she isn’t there, she creates a hole in his heart, and the puzzle that makes up Combeferre is missing a piece.

Since she slammed that door, the edges of his chest have been burning, and his fingers itch to stroke the scarred but silky skin of her forearms. His nose feels numb because he can’t smell her shampoo, so he goes into the bathroom to sit on the edge of the tub.

The hairspray thing is exactly right, though.

_All the little things I used to take for granted,_  
 _Now I miss them most of all_  
 _Ain't it funny how a woman walking out the door_  
 _Can bring a man to crawl?_

Every morning before her work and before his morning classes, his bathroom is filled with sweet-smelling steam. She leaves her toiletries everywhere—toothpaste open, brush full of wavy brown hair, various creams and powders and pencils scattered across the counter. His own things are by contrast neatly lined up in the shower and medicine cabinet: toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, contact solution and case, comb, shampoo, soap. Not even his shower is safe; a bright green loofah hangs from the head, smelling of mint. Sometimes this shower drives him crazy—the hot water goes out in less than ten minutes, and the water pressure is terrible. When they’re both trying to clean up before class and work, it can lead to biting remarks about long hair or stubble or getting up earlier. But then it inevitably leads to them showering together (to save time), and they’re barely on time to work anyway because she loves working shampoo through his hair, reaching up as he bends nearly in half to let her.

(there’s other reasons, too).

And after they shower at night, they sit and watch movies together, everything from Monty Python to John Wayne to Charlie Chaplin, and he just sits and breathes in her scent, the body wash and the coffee from the Musain that never really goes away, even after showering, and the cigarette smoke that lets him know if she’s been sharing with Grantaire, though she knows he hates it.

_And I'd surrender all_  
 _To bring you back to me_  
 _Give up everything I own_  
 _Get down on my hands and knees_  
 _Just to hear the phone ringing down the hall_  
 _Oh, if you would only call, I'd surrender all_

He pulls his phone from his back pocket, staring at it intently, willing it to light up with “Bitch-Goddess” (her work, not his—her subtitle is “Eponine <3”).

This isn’t the first time that Eponine’s picked a fight. She’ll have a bad tip day at work, or Gavroche will get in trouble at school again, or Azelma will go back to Montparnasse for the umpteenth time, and she’ll talk about how she doesn’t deserve him, about how she and her fucked-up life can do nothing but sully his future. Usually it rolls off him, and he simply wraps her in his arms and tells her, again, how much he loves her. It’s nights like these when his shirts disappear—after some wall-shaking, bed-rocking sex, she’ll wrap up in one of his flannels and curl into his side, and take it home with her the next morning. She might have more of his shirts now than he does.

This fight was different, though. She’d had a shitty enough day—one of Combeferre’s three one-night stands came into the Musain looking for him, still somehow remembering both his name and his number from _a year and a half ago—_ and when Éponine warned her off her man, the girl had simply looked her up and down and smirked.

Éponine had kept her claws sheathed only because Gavroche needed new shoes, and she can’t afford to lose this job.

On this day of all days, though, it was coupled with Combeferre losing his first patient on his surgery rounds. This time, when Eponine snuck in a jab at herself, he was in no mood to comfort her—he just wanted to sleep. This had led to her fishing for compliments, and him snapping at her that there were people _dying_ out there and couldn’t her self-esteem be put on hold for five seconds?

It’d degenerated from there, with her calling him cold and him calling her overemotional and inconsiderate. She’d thrown out the word _boring,_ and he the word _reckless._ It culminated in her shouting that she had been reckless when she’d taken a chance on _him,_ and storming out the door.

_Now I'm staring out the window_  
 _Praying every passing car would bring you home_  
 _So I could take you in my arms_  
 _And give the kind of love_  
 _You should have known_

It’s been barely an hour and already his arms ache from not holding her, and his tear ducts are frozen from tears he can’t seem to let fall. Perhaps he is cold.

He knows that he’s not the most emotional of men—he was a shy child, and as he’s gotten older he’s allowed others to emote for him. Courfeyrac’s highs are higher than Everest, and Grantaire regularly sits in Satan’s mouth, so he’s created a middle ground for himself. But that’s what he needs _her_ for—to take her with him on her highs, while he drags her up from the depths of her lows. 

He can’t find it in himself to even get up from the tub, to move towards the window and turn off this stupid, morose song that describes him all too well. He leans back against the cold tile and heaves a deep, shuddering sigh, as his tears begin, one by one, to fall.

* * *

 

He’s jostled from his tear-induced sleep by his phone vibrating against the tile, lying on the tub floor from when he’d dropped it. He answers it before checking, staggering to his feet as his back cracks from the awkward position and his toes tingle to life.

“Nina?” He’s the only one that calls her that. It rolls off his tongue better than Ep, like what Grantaire calls her, and she’s admitted to liking that he has a name just for her. When they are together, they are not the guide and the girl from the streets, not the staid one and the wild one, but a whole; a completed puzzle.

“Combeferre.” Her voice is tired, but sober. He’d been afraid that she’d go boozing with R, find a man as spontaneous as she is, and forget her guide waiting for her at home.

“Nina, come home. I’m so sorry.”

“No, _I’m_ sorry. You always take care of me,” she says in a small voice. “And I couldn’t see past myself to take care of you, not even once.”

“Nina, you take care of me every day. You make me better, please, just _come home, I need you—_ “

“I forgot my key. I’ve been out here for an hour. Let me in?”

It’s only then that he realizes he can hear her voice from two places, one from the phone held to his ear and the other on the threshold of the door. He’s never crossed the den so fast, and his fingers slip as he tries to undo the deadbolt.

His phone falls to the carpet, forgotten, as the door swings open. And there she is, his Eponine, standing there with her Nokia pressed to her cheek, which hits the concrete as she nearly falls into his arms. There’s a blur of murmured _I love you_ s and apologies and he runs his hands up and down her arms, and she buries her face in his shirt and simply breathes. But he’s not satisfied with that, pulling her up nearly off her feet to capture her lips as he pulls her into the apartment and slams the door. What starts out bruising in its enthusiasm softens eventually, becoming an expression of love rather than relief. They break apart after either ten seconds or ten years, and he lowers her to the ground.

_And I'd surrender all_  
 _To bring you back to me_  
 _Give up everything I own_  
 _Get down on my hands and knees_  
 _Just to hear the phone ringing down the hall_  
 _Oh, if you would only call, I'd surrender all_

“Never leave me again.” It’s a command, a plea.

“Never let me.” A bargain.

They disappear into the bedroom, not sure if they’ll make up tonight or if they’ll just hold each other. But they know beyond doubt that for them, losing the other is not an option. Their love is the forever kind, the thick-and-thin, tears and shirts, habit-tolerating, completing kind.

_Oh, if you would only call, I'd surrender all_

The needle lifts, and the record grinds to a halt.

 

 

 

fin

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! This is my first wander into Les Mis fic, and I hope you like it. If it matters to you, my headcanon of Combeferre is somewhere between Killian Donnelly's Courfeyrac in the 25th Anniversary concert, and a tall, lanky lumberjack with glasses. (rimless glasses, though). The song is "I'd Surrender All" by Randy Travis, and it's that song's fault that this fic was written rather than my calculus homework, so THANK YOU, sir. 
> 
> I've been informed by my French-speaking beta that Nine or Nina is a perfectly acceptable diminutive of Eponine. Also, I couldn't have done this without her, not least because she gave me the book, so thank you, opabine!
> 
> Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this! I'm hoping it'll be part of a snapshot series one day.
> 
>  
> 
> -stargirl


End file.
